Californians were outraged this past election season when an Arizona group made an $11 million donation to a campaign committee based in this state that was opposing Gov. Jerry Brown's Proposition 30.

At least it was Arizona money on the surface. The suspicion was that the funds were actually sourced from wealthy Californians who, after all, have a dog in the fight when it comes to paying more state taxes as part of the governor's attempt to balance the books.

It's fine if they want to use their money to protect their interests. Public employee unions and corporations do so regularly. It's not fine to hide it.

Loopholes in federal election laws mean that nonprofits are not required to reveal their donors. State law requires groups to identify only donors who gave money specifically for political purposes.

This runs counter to our belief in a transparent electoral system in which all the players know who all the rest of the players are. It should and does matter which organizations, businesses and people are supporting a measure or a candidate; it helps voters see through the slick arguments.

If an otherwise reasonable-seeming state ballot measure on health care, for instance, gets most of its support from the big tobacco companies, voters like to know that. When you follow the money and its provenance raises questions, you dig deeper.

Yet we have typically given too much nice-guy credence to nonprofits - as if any organization without profit as a motivation is ipso facto pure.

That's why we support efforts by state senators Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, and Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to close the nonprofit loophole.

Their Senate Bill 3 would require nonprofits with at least $100,000 in donations to a political campaign in a year to release the names of the donors who made the contribution possible.

Interestingly enough, these laws haven't really been updated since the immediately post-Watergate reforms of the mid-1970s.

Another proposed law, Assembly Bill 45, by Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, would require nonprofits to identify any "last-minute" - within six months of an election - donors who give $50,000 or more to a measure.

Common Cause and other good government groups have long said that political-contribution laws need an overhaul. They're a little ticked that it took an $11 million "money bomb" to get more Californians riled up.

Better late than never. Democrats with their new supermajority should pass these laws rather than trying to protect any nonprofit money bombs they are waiting to explode in their own favor.